Your wallet wanna die? Go buy that cheap 745
Discussion
k me.....
This post covers from the MOT in August 2015 through to the end of 2015.
Most of this is still working off the original diagnosis list with a few failures thrown in.
In terms of oil leaks basically every seal was leaking, so I thought I could separate the engine into upper and lower sections. Upper includes valve cover gaskets etc, as per list below, lower includes the 2 sump gaskets and the notorious alternator bracket gasket. It has a water cooled alternator and the bracket where this mounts to has an oil passage which goes nowhere as it doesn't have the oil cooler, but basically needs the front subframe dropping or engine out to replace (we can have a good look at this later on). So I dealt with the upper end first as I was concerned with oil getting down onto the exhaust manifolds possibly causing a fire, and the oil I found in the spark plug wells would kill the coils (see ignition coil section below too).
Someone had put red silicone gasket maker all around the hardened valve covers and spark plug tubes but there's no way this is going to work.
In terms of coolant and power steering fluid leaks they were manageable, power steering wasn't bad at all really. The coolant wasn't visibly escaping so must have been the dreaded 'valley pipe' where the leakage evaporates before it escapes out of a bleed hole. As the system has a 2 bar rad cap and 105C thermostat sometimes leaks can be hard to track down as the coolant vaporises as it leaks and very small ones won't really leave behind traces of crystals.
I bought the Febi spark plug tubes as the BMW ones are apparently not available anymore, or at least weren't when I tried to get them. There is a rubber seal moulded onto the top and bottom, what I didn't realise is the Febi ones are too small in diameter at the lower end so don't seal, we'll come back to this later.
For some reason I bought a Meyle oil pressure switch, not really sure why as I don't buy Meyle parts as I'd had several bad experiences with them on my E46. I'm gonna assume I ordered a different brand off eBay and they sent a Meyle and I couldn't be bothered to get another (I should have). They're not an OEM but heavily lean on the 'OEM quality' which I don't think is justified. The switch failed soon after fitting, which actually caused the only breakdown I've had in this car. I was driving to work one day and had an oil pressure warning, got recovered to the same local garage and they replaced it with a BMW one for £12 with £114 diagnosis and labour (ffs).
It was quite funny when I got recovered on a low loader as when I got winched on the tow bar at the back grounded out. The car was stuck until we jacked the rear end up and put some wood under the rear wheels.
On the point I find Febi parts to be hit and miss, again I greatly prefer actual OEM parts (that is for the given part e.g. Bosch coils, not Bosch oil filters). So with all the Febi parts I check them to see if they're good and worth fitting or just reboxed cheap parts, you get both situations.
For BMWs the brands I typically rely on as of today are Lemforder, TRW, Sachs, ATE, Textar, Mann, Mahle, Hengst, Continental (drive belts), Castrol, Michelin, Gates, Hella Behr, Corteco, Elring, Bosch, Wahler, Saleri, Febi. But like I said it depends on what type of parts they are too.
I replaced the bodged crank case vent hoses with the updated insulated type, my valve covers have the crank case vent valves build into each so they're just simple pipes. Some have the right side valve built into the hose (see diagram below). I'll explain how to test the crank case vacuum later, mine was ok. Inadequate crank case vacuum from faulty valves or say excessive blowby will cause oil leaks as the pressure pushes oil out of all the seals. Although my valves were ok when checked it might explain why I had so many leaks from places beyond the typical ones affected by 15 year old brittle gaskets.
Valve cover gaskets & oil seals:
After the first ignition coil failure and cleaning out all the oil from around the spark plugs I had subsequent coil failures 3 times on essentially a weekly basis, until I replaced all the remaining ones too. As a V8 it's not a disaster you can just feel a vibration and get the engine management light, it cuts fuel to that cylinder so no risk to cats from unburnt fuel. I had another car to use (Polo 1.4 TDI) so I didn't run it misfiring, and they always manifested on a cold start in a morning. I managed to get a good price on the individual purchases but had to stump up when I bought the last 4. I think £20-25 is the going rate.
The coil failures would have been caused by having the spark plugs sat under 2 inches of oil, it gets between the plug and coil and the resistance works the coils harder until they fail.
Ignition coils:
I replaced the rear suspension parts referred to on the MOT advisory, they helpfully showed me exactly which ones were gone. I had a good relationship with them as they knew I was doing most of the work myself but were going to use them for several jobs I couldn't tackle on my uneven drive (or didn't want to do). They'd also fit the parts I supplied as I was only buying decent parts, their main gripe was with people turning up with dirt cheap eBay parts that would fail prematurely and they'd get the comeback (kind of like the Meyle oil pressure switch if I'd had them fit it in the first place).
Rear suspension:
For the clunk in first and second gear I had the garage replace the flex disc/guibo, this fixed the issue in itself but I'd say the gearbox wasn't 100% overall. It still had a sticky change down to first and putting it in drive from park had a bit of a clunk, drove fine though. Cheap parts so that helps offset fitting cost.
Propshaft:
Beyond the oil pressure switch actual breakdown and the ignition coils I did have two more failures during this period. First was some electrical haywires which I traced to the 'integrated supply module', I can't remember what this does but it's just an electrical power supply module with fuses and what have you in it (bear in mind I'm a mechanical engineer not electrical). This is apparently a common failure, like with some E46 issues some are a matter of when not if).
The second was a flat tyre on the day before Christmas Eve that turned out to be a cracked wheel. The ones available on eBay were all either cracked or welded (and £100-200) so I enquired at BMW, they said as it was Christmas I could have 20% off instead of my usual 10% so that was nice. Had to go get that on Christmas Eve. At this point and after having my E46 for 6 years I was on first name terms with my local BMW parts department, they always knew it was me from my Manc accent
Usual conversation just went "hi it's Pastie, got the part numbers for you XYZ"..."hi Pastie that's £xxx"..."ok I'll have them cheers"
The rear wheels are style 95 19x10" with 275/40R19 tyres. Fronts are 19x9" with 245/45R19.
I also did another oil change to 'flush out' a little, as I had no service history.
For the broken intake pipe nipple I managed to epoxy a little brass tube into the bore, and then epoxy a larger one onto that to size for the vacuum hose. It's held firm for 6 years now so was a good repair, but probably not ideal as if it dislodged it could end up in the engine, although the larger one I put on the outside meant it couldn't be pulled through the small bore. At £34 I should have just replaced it but I figured it would just get broken again (there's a similar thing on the M54 engine 'F piece').
Running total is £3964
At this point I'd done 4500 miles
I've still only covered 86 rows out of 380 on the spreadsheet
Should mention these costs are just parts and labour, I can also add up tax, insurance, MOTs, fuel etc. later to give a full ownership figure.
Thinking back to the original big diagnosis list I'd solved quite a bit and had these known issues left from it, so in terms of driving it was in an ok position really. The concern with the smoking is carbon fouling of cylinders, plugs, cats, O2 sensors, exhaust manifold etc. but without doing a 32x valve stem seal replacement that requires either the engine out to remove the cylinder heads or a £1k special tool kit to do it in situ (which would NOT be fun doing outside, or at all really) there's not a lot you can do. The main thing was there was no smoke while driving (check by following it) so I figured just keep the idling to a minimum and it should be ok. They can get so bad as to be belching smoke while idling though.
Water cooled alternator
Most of this is still working off the original diagnosis list with a few failures thrown in.
In terms of oil leaks basically every seal was leaking, so I thought I could separate the engine into upper and lower sections. Upper includes valve cover gaskets etc, as per list below, lower includes the 2 sump gaskets and the notorious alternator bracket gasket. It has a water cooled alternator and the bracket where this mounts to has an oil passage which goes nowhere as it doesn't have the oil cooler, but basically needs the front subframe dropping or engine out to replace (we can have a good look at this later on). So I dealt with the upper end first as I was concerned with oil getting down onto the exhaust manifolds possibly causing a fire, and the oil I found in the spark plug wells would kill the coils (see ignition coil section below too).
Someone had put red silicone gasket maker all around the hardened valve covers and spark plug tubes but there's no way this is going to work.
In terms of coolant and power steering fluid leaks they were manageable, power steering wasn't bad at all really. The coolant wasn't visibly escaping so must have been the dreaded 'valley pipe' where the leakage evaporates before it escapes out of a bleed hole. As the system has a 2 bar rad cap and 105C thermostat sometimes leaks can be hard to track down as the coolant vaporises as it leaks and very small ones won't really leave behind traces of crystals.
I bought the Febi spark plug tubes as the BMW ones are apparently not available anymore, or at least weren't when I tried to get them. There is a rubber seal moulded onto the top and bottom, what I didn't realise is the Febi ones are too small in diameter at the lower end so don't seal, we'll come back to this later.
For some reason I bought a Meyle oil pressure switch, not really sure why as I don't buy Meyle parts as I'd had several bad experiences with them on my E46. I'm gonna assume I ordered a different brand off eBay and they sent a Meyle and I couldn't be bothered to get another (I should have). They're not an OEM but heavily lean on the 'OEM quality' which I don't think is justified. The switch failed soon after fitting, which actually caused the only breakdown I've had in this car. I was driving to work one day and had an oil pressure warning, got recovered to the same local garage and they replaced it with a BMW one for £12 with £114 diagnosis and labour (ffs).
It was quite funny when I got recovered on a low loader as when I got winched on the tow bar at the back grounded out. The car was stuck until we jacked the rear end up and put some wood under the rear wheels.
On the point I find Febi parts to be hit and miss, again I greatly prefer actual OEM parts (that is for the given part e.g. Bosch coils, not Bosch oil filters). So with all the Febi parts I check them to see if they're good and worth fitting or just reboxed cheap parts, you get both situations.
For BMWs the brands I typically rely on as of today are Lemforder, TRW, Sachs, ATE, Textar, Mann, Mahle, Hengst, Continental (drive belts), Castrol, Michelin, Gates, Hella Behr, Corteco, Elring, Bosch, Wahler, Saleri, Febi. But like I said it depends on what type of parts they are too.
I replaced the bodged crank case vent hoses with the updated insulated type, my valve covers have the crank case vent valves build into each so they're just simple pipes. Some have the right side valve built into the hose (see diagram below). I'll explain how to test the crank case vacuum later, mine was ok. Inadequate crank case vacuum from faulty valves or say excessive blowby will cause oil leaks as the pressure pushes oil out of all the seals. Although my valves were ok when checked it might explain why I had so many leaks from places beyond the typical ones affected by 15 year old brittle gaskets.
Valve cover gaskets & oil seals:
- Valve cover gasket 1-4 Elring £49.38
- Valve cover gasket 5-8 Elring £58.77
- Upper timing cover seal 1-4 BMW £6.02
- Upper timing cover seal 5-8 BMW £6.02
- Spark plug tubes x8 Febi £66.56
- Vanos solenoid small o-ring x4 BMW £7.58
- Vanos solenoid large o-ring x4 BMW £13.15
- Camshaft position sensor seal x2 BMW £7.89
- Sensor o-rings x4 BMW £5.04
- Sensor bolts x8 BMW £12.28
- Vacuum pump seal repair kit eBay £7.34
- Oil pressure switch Meyle £4.72 (replaced)
- Oil pressure switch BMW £12.42 +£114.00 fitting
- Crank case vent hose 1-4 BMW £43.44
- Crank case vent hose 5-8 BMW £45.91
- Oil non-return valve x4 BMW £63.36
After the first ignition coil failure and cleaning out all the oil from around the spark plugs I had subsequent coil failures 3 times on essentially a weekly basis, until I replaced all the remaining ones too. As a V8 it's not a disaster you can just feel a vibration and get the engine management light, it cuts fuel to that cylinder so no risk to cats from unburnt fuel. I had another car to use (Polo 1.4 TDI) so I didn't run it misfiring, and they always manifested on a cold start in a morning. I managed to get a good price on the individual purchases but had to stump up when I bought the last 4. I think £20-25 is the going rate.
The coil failures would have been caused by having the spark plugs sat under 2 inches of oil, it gets between the plug and coil and the resistance works the coils harder until they fail.
Ignition coils:
- Ignition coil Bosch 1x £16.00, 1x £19.99, 1x £21.00, 4x £39.00
I replaced the rear suspension parts referred to on the MOT advisory, they helpfully showed me exactly which ones were gone. I had a good relationship with them as they knew I was doing most of the work myself but were going to use them for several jobs I couldn't tackle on my uneven drive (or didn't want to do). They'd also fit the parts I supplied as I was only buying decent parts, their main gripe was with people turning up with dirt cheap eBay parts that would fail prematurely and they'd get the comeback (kind of like the Meyle oil pressure switch if I'd had them fit it in the first place).
Rear suspension:
- Rear right control arm Lemforder £75.72
- Rear right guide rod £59.40
For the clunk in first and second gear I had the garage replace the flex disc/guibo, this fixed the issue in itself but I'd say the gearbox wasn't 100% overall. It still had a sticky change down to first and putting it in drive from park had a bit of a clunk, drove fine though. Cheap parts so that helps offset fitting cost.
Propshaft:
- Flex disc Lemforder £19.43
- Centring bush Febi £12.73
- Center bearing Febi £33.55
- Fitting £188.88
Beyond the oil pressure switch actual breakdown and the ignition coils I did have two more failures during this period. First was some electrical haywires which I traced to the 'integrated supply module', I can't remember what this does but it's just an electrical power supply module with fuses and what have you in it (bear in mind I'm a mechanical engineer not electrical). This is apparently a common failure, like with some E46 issues some are a matter of when not if).
The second was a flat tyre on the day before Christmas Eve that turned out to be a cracked wheel. The ones available on eBay were all either cracked or welded (and £100-200) so I enquired at BMW, they said as it was Christmas I could have 20% off instead of my usual 10% so that was nice. Had to go get that on Christmas Eve. At this point and after having my E46 for 6 years I was on first name terms with my local BMW parts department, they always knew it was me from my Manc accent
Usual conversation just went "hi it's Pastie, got the part numbers for you XYZ"..."hi Pastie that's £xxx"..."ok I'll have them cheers"
The rear wheels are style 95 19x10" with 275/40R19 tyres. Fronts are 19x9" with 245/45R19.
I also did another oil change to 'flush out' a little, as I had no service history.
For the broken intake pipe nipple I managed to epoxy a little brass tube into the bore, and then epoxy a larger one onto that to size for the vacuum hose. It's held firm for 6 years now so was a good repair, but probably not ideal as if it dislodged it could end up in the engine, although the larger one I put on the outside meant it couldn't be pulled through the small bore. At £34 I should have just replaced it but I figured it would just get broken again (there's a similar thing on the M54 engine 'F piece').
- Rear alloy wheel BMW £433.50
- Integrated supply module BMW £67.05
- Engine oil Quantum £21.58
- Oil filter Mann £7.99
Running total is £3964
At this point I'd done 4500 miles
I've still only covered 86 rows out of 380 on the spreadsheet
Should mention these costs are just parts and labour, I can also add up tax, insurance, MOTs, fuel etc. later to give a full ownership figure.
Thinking back to the original big diagnosis list I'd solved quite a bit and had these known issues left from it, so in terms of driving it was in an ok position really. The concern with the smoking is carbon fouling of cylinders, plugs, cats, O2 sensors, exhaust manifold etc. but without doing a 32x valve stem seal replacement that requires either the engine out to remove the cylinder heads or a £1k special tool kit to do it in situ (which would NOT be fun doing outside, or at all really) there's not a lot you can do. The main thing was there was no smoke while driving (check by following it) so I figured just keep the idling to a minimum and it should be ok. They can get so bad as to be belching smoke while idling though.
- Very heavy smoke when revved after idling, none while driving (valve stem seals).
- Heavy oil leaks from alternator bracket & sump.
- Heavy coolant leak, most likely valley pipe.
- Minor power steering / dynamic drive fluid leak.
- Sat nav didn't work, blank screen when selected.
- Sometimes the stereo would go 'pop' and lose audio.
- Glove box fuse box cover was broken.
- It has a detachable tow bar but the electrics didn't work, appear to have been bodged into the brake lights and then disconnected.
Water cooled alternator
Edited by Pastie Bloater on Wednesday 26th May 07:24
Seeing as you now know the inner workings of the comfort seats if you see any for sale making one into a working adjustable chair for a man cave would be quality. I'm guessing though that even a tatty set to restore would cost a lot from someone breaking a car.
Awesome thread by the way.
Awesome thread by the way.
Jules Sunley said:
Seeing as you now know the inner workings of the comfort seats if you see any for sale making one into a working adjustable chair for a man cave would be quality. I'm guessing though that even a tatty set to restore would cost a lot from someone breaking a car.
Awesome thread by the way.
Aha I may or may not have already hatched secret plans for a man cave sofa using some of these electric recliner rear seats - heated and cooled ideally (rather than the usual fixed bench or front seat affairs). They even have a cupholder and storage in the armrest, ideal for tv remotes or phone charger.Awesome thread by the way.
There's no backrest support built in it bolts to the car, so need to make a base frame using the dimensions from the car or could modify them to get more recline.
There's actually seat control modules (!) between the switches/power/buses and each side so would need those (with connectors too).
The modules would also need programming to the options if necessary so would have to use the car for that process.
I can also use the car to figure out what wires do what (the wiring diagrams are in ISTA too).
I made a bench harness for my E46 engine ecu for desktop remapping but that's easy as it interfaces directly with the OBD port via K line.
Thanks and thanks all I'm glad you are all enjoying it
Need these seat parts
Example seat module (one per side)
E46 bench harness
Edited by Pastie Bloater on Friday 19th November 07:14
Pastie Bloater said:
Jules Sunley said:
Seeing as you now know the inner workings of the comfort seats if you see any for sale making one into a working adjustable chair for a man cave would be quality. I'm guessing though that even a tatty set to restore would cost a lot from someone breaking a car.
Awesome thread by the way.
Aha I may or may not have already hatched secret plans for a man cave sofa using some of these electric recliner rear seats - heated and cooled ideally (rather than the usual fixed bench or front seat affairs). They even have a cupholder and storage in the armrest, ideal for tv remotes or phone charger.Awesome thread by the way.
There's no backrest support built in it bolts to the car, so need to make a base frame using the dimensions from the car or could modify them to get more recline.
There's actually seat control modules (!) between the switches/power/buses and each side so would need those (with connectors too).
The modules would also need programming to the options if necessary so would have to use the car for that process.
I can also use the car to figure out what wires do what (the wiring diagrams are in ISTA too).
I made a bench harness for my E46 engine ecu for desktop remapping but that's easy as it interfaces directly with the OBD port via K line.
Thanks and thanks all I'm glad you are all enjoying it
Need these seat parts
Example seat module (one per side)
E46 bench harness
Edited by Pastie Bloater on Tuesday 25th May 11:53
This needs to happen, if I had your skills I'd defo be all over this!Gallons Per Mile said:
Fantastic stuff, please keep this coming!
I'm interested in the bench ECU setup too, would you mind sharing details of software you're using etc? Might be useful for my E90!
Yeah I can do a little write up and wiring diagram for it, what engine is yours?I'm interested in the bench ECU setup too, would you mind sharing details of software you're using etc? Might be useful for my E90!
This is Siemens MS43 which now has strong hardware support, but like coding/programming you're pretty much on your own in terms of using the software as there is £££s to be made from that knowledge.
Frankly I'm more of an NCS dummy
I might have to pick your brain then as I've just replaced the idrive screen, mine had gone all garbled. Giving it a strong whack worked for the last year but stopped recently.
I've put in a correct pre-facelift replacement off eBay (£60, can highly recommend Global Parts) but all of my options are missing e.g. Logic 7, heated seat distribution (backrest/cushion), CD changer etc.
Figured I'd have to put the old one in (it still works just garbled), read the coding, then put the new one in and match its coding?
Not attempted anything yet so will see how I get on, but might need assistance
I know there's a secret idrive screen menu too but can't remember what that does (if anything).
If I can get the screen sorted I'd be more confident to crack on with the sofa as I could then get any seat module and code it to suit the seats I get (really want heated and cooled).
I might have to pick your brain then as I've just replaced the idrive screen, mine had gone all garbled. Giving it a strong whack worked for the last year but stopped recently.
I've put in a correct pre-facelift replacement off eBay (£60, can highly recommend Global Parts) but all of my options are missing e.g. Logic 7, heated seat distribution (backrest/cushion), CD changer etc.
Figured I'd have to put the old one in (it still works just garbled), read the coding, then put the new one in and match its coding?
Not attempted anything yet so will see how I get on, but might need assistance
I know there's a secret idrive screen menu too but can't remember what that does (if anything).
If I can get the screen sorted I'd be more confident to crack on with the sofa as I could then get any seat module and code it to suit the seats I get (really want heated and cooled).
Edited by Pastie Bloater on Wednesday 26th May 15:50
Haha yes, NCS dummy is good too - I like using that as it's a bit 'safer'. I'm not that much of a whizz but I'll certainly help if I can. I reckon you're right on reading the old unit's config and then tweaking the new one to suit. I didn't know about the secret Idrive screen though.
Just measured the brake discs as I finally bought a measuring thingy. I replaced discs and pads in July 2015 and they have 24k miles on.
Front mm (Brembo): new 30, min 28.4, actual 28.7, 81% worn
Rear mm (Zimmerman): new 24, min 22.4, actual 23.5, 31% worn
Quite surprising really and they're not grooved or scored at all. The pads have life left but if I assume I'll get another 6k miles out of the front discs the pads will be gone at that point. So I'll get about 30k miles out of the fronts, lots more out of the rears. At my current mileage that'll be in about 6 years time.
It's a little 3D printed attachment for vernier calipers, only £7 on eBay. I borrowed these photos from the listing.
Want to check my Micra (front) discs, they're new 12, min 10
Front mm (Brembo): new 30, min 28.4, actual 28.7, 81% worn
Rear mm (Zimmerman): new 24, min 22.4, actual 23.5, 31% worn
Quite surprising really and they're not grooved or scored at all. The pads have life left but if I assume I'll get another 6k miles out of the front discs the pads will be gone at that point. So I'll get about 30k miles out of the fronts, lots more out of the rears. At my current mileage that'll be in about 6 years time.
It's a little 3D printed attachment for vernier calipers, only £7 on eBay. I borrowed these photos from the listing.
Want to check my Micra (front) discs, they're new 12, min 10
On the subject of an i-drive 'secret menu' is this the CCC system? If so if anyone knows how to get into this I'd love to know. My 2005 E61 is showing an incorrect current location on the Sat Nav and googling hasn't helped me - I believe there is a reset option (there was in a previous BMW I had). My nav moves when on the move, but is out by x miles so I think needs a reset! Cheers
No this is first gen idrive (NAVI01-NAVI03) on E65/E66 only, the process is:
Ignition on
Go to main menu
Press and hold control knob for 10 seconds
Clockwise 3 clicks
Anti-clockwise 3 clicks
Clockwise 1 click
Anti-clockwise 1 click
Clockwise 1 click
Press control knob
Thinking about it my replacement idrive screen has an option for programmable diamond button (would be next to control knob that I don't have), so it's a NAVI02 generation screen (October 2003 on).
My car is NAVI01 generation (September 2001 on), but has a NAVI02 generation DVD sat nav drive fitted, that's never worked (NAVI01 is CD based).
I should still be able to use the screen as realoem says all the part numbers are exchangeable retrospectively.
Maybe the DVD sat nav drive will work with the new screen.
For info NAVI03 is April 2005 on i.e. facelift.
Ignition on
Go to main menu
Press and hold control knob for 10 seconds
Clockwise 3 clicks
Anti-clockwise 3 clicks
Clockwise 1 click
Anti-clockwise 1 click
Clockwise 1 click
Press control knob
Thinking about it my replacement idrive screen has an option for programmable diamond button (would be next to control knob that I don't have), so it's a NAVI02 generation screen (October 2003 on).
My car is NAVI01 generation (September 2001 on), but has a NAVI02 generation DVD sat nav drive fitted, that's never worked (NAVI01 is CD based).
I should still be able to use the screen as realoem says all the part numbers are exchangeable retrospectively.
Maybe the DVD sat nav drive will work with the new screen.
For info NAVI03 is April 2005 on i.e. facelift.
Edited by Pastie Bloater on Thursday 27th May 09:02
Gassing Station | Readers' Cars | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff